Romania's dictator Ceausescu fled Bucharest by helicopter
On this day · 22 December 1989
As crowds stormed his headquarters, the man who ruled Romania for 24 years escaped from the roof in a helicopter.
For 24 years Nicolae Ceausescu ruled Romania with a cult of personality and a feared secret police. By December 1989 the country was starving, the cold Cold War order was crumbling, and protest that began in Timisoara had reached the capital.
On 22 December 1989, Ceausescu tried to calm a vast crowd from the balcony of the Central Committee building in Bucharest. He was jeered instead. As demonstrators surged inside and the army switched sides, he and his wife Elena climbed to the roof and fled by helicopter.
The flight lasted minutes; the regime it ended had lasted decades.
The escape did not save them. The couple were soon captured near Targoviste, tried by a hasty military tribunal, and executed on Christmas Day, 25 December 1989 — the only leaders of the 1989 revolutions to die so violently. Romania’s transition from communism had begun, but its first hours were chaotic and bloody.
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